Building My Net Zero Energy Home: Changing the Foot Print for Passive Solar Gain

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If you have been reading my blog, you will remember that my goal in this new house is to derive all the comfort I need from an airtight, superinsulated, passive solar design.

That meant that the first thing I had to do was change the footprint of the house. The previous home that burned in a fire was rectangular, which is ideal for passive solar, but it was not designed for solar. That meant that there weren’t very windows on the southern facade. South-facing glass allows the low-angled winter sun to penetrate. There were also way too many windows on the north side. North side windows allow heat to escape on cold winter nights.

The other big problem with the design was that the two bedrooms were “stacked” — one faced the south and the other faced the north. The north bedroom received no solar gain whatsoever. To rectify this huge problem, I redesigned the house, making it longer and narrower. As a result, the kitchen, living room, guest bedroom, bathroom and master bedroom all lined up side by side. Each became its own solar collector. That eliminated the need to move heat from one room to another, a task that is difficult to accomplish without a lot of outside energy and fans and ducts.

In this photo, the excavator has begun cleaning out the hole where my previous house was placed.

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